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GAMING NEWS

Valve Replies To EA's Attack On Steam Sales

Do you enjoy getting games for a good price? Well, EA doesn't want you to. Thankfully, Valve has your back.

You might remember earlier in the month when EA's David DeMartini, head of the company's Origin department, attacked Valve for offering game sales that sometimes go as high as 75% off. He went as far as to say that the deals are so good that they "cheapen intellectual property", and that they weaken initial sales by rewarding gamers for waiting for major discounts.

We do it with our own games. If we thought having a 75 per cent sale on Portal 2 would cheapen Portal 2, we wouldn't do it. We know there are all kinds of ways customers consume things, get value, come back, build franchises. We think lots of those things strengthen it.

Check. All that's left is for him to counter the comment about damaging launch month sales.

...if all that were true, nobody would ever pre-purchase a game ever on Steam, ever again. You just wouldn't. You would in the back of your mind be like, okay, in six months to a year, maybe it'll be 50 per cent off on a day or a weekend or during one of our seasonal promotions. Probably true. But our pre-orders are bigger than they used to be.

Checkmate.

The biggest thing that DeMartini fails to consider is that video game sales are down as the industry is in decline. Games are priced at $60 and during hard economic times paying full price for a game that came out months ago isn't very appealing. The big choice is whether we want to pay full price to experience the game at launch and be playing it when it's the hot topic in town, or wait a few months and pay a fair price.